It’s been a busy year for the heavy-duty aftermarket. With the age of the nation’s fleet still high, fleets are spending a lot of money to keep trucks on the road. Given the importance of maintenance and repair, we'll recap some of the key issues that affected fleets in this area in 2014.

From September 7-13 – Brake Safety Week – more than 30,000 brake inspections are expected to be conducted. Roadside inspectors will be inspecting brake-system components to identify loose and missing parts; air and hydraulic fluid leaks; worn linings, pads, drums and rotors; and other faulty brake-system components.

Have you been avoiding spec’ing your vehicles with air disc brakes because you think they are not seeing widespread use or because you have concerns about the cost of maintaining them? Aftermarket Editor Denise Rondini says you may be surprised.

Coming up: another “non-event” for brakes? That’s what Phase Two of new federal stopping-distance requirements will be for truck operators, according to people we talked with. Stronger, higher-performance brakes on certain vehicles won’t even cost much more in most cases. But like Phase One two years ago, which was hardly noticed by truckers, Phase Two represents a lot of work for brake makers and truck builders.

If you know what to look for, and are sensitive to the symptoms, you can spot many potential brake problems before they become real liabilities. And having concluded there's a problem, you can report it to the shop in a way that might prompt more than a readjustment of the slack adjusters.

While equipment defects are a cause in only a small percentage of truck crashes, brake defects account for a large percentage of the trucks taken out of service. Many of those defects are adjustment issues.

It's more important than ever to protect a truck's air system from contamination, because there are more and more on-vehicle technologies making use of that air. That's why having and taking proper care of an air dryer is vital.

The slow economic recovery and the federal government's new Compliance, Safety, Accountability enforcement program will help drive demand for aftermarket pads and shoes for Class 4-8 trucks, according to a new study by Frost & Sullivan, while increasing demand for disk brakes could prove a challenge to independent service providers.

Fleet Brake announced plans for a new parts distribution center in Mississauga, Ontario. When at full capacity, the 50,000-square-foot facility will employ up to 50 people and is expected to be operational in February 2013.